In Cuba, a Politically Incorrect Love of the Frigidaire
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 2, 2007
Two artists, Alejandro Leyva, left, and Esteban Leyva, with their
"General Eléctrico," found a new use for an old appliance.
ANYONE who thinks the cold war ended years ago clearly has not spent
time in Cuban kitchens.
Before he disappeared from public life, an ailing Fidel Castro enlisted
the prowess of Chinese industry last year to get rid of some of the most
resilient totems of American imperialism: Frigidaire, Kelvinator and
Westinghouse refrigerators from the 1950s. The government acquired more
than 300,000 new Chinese replacements as the centerpiece of a project to
improve energy efficiency in a cash-starved country and eliminate what
Mr. Castro called "dragons which devour our electricity."
But the vanquishing of these refrigerators (along with some Soviet
models imported in the 1970s) has caused some wistfulness and angst
here. In their decades of isolation from the American economy and from
global prosperity, Cubans have been taught to take pride in the way they
have kept grandiose old mechanical marvels running — ancient Cadillacs
and Russian-built Ladas included.
"They took away my señor and replaced him with a little guy," said a
47-year-old cook who lives in the Reparto Zamora district in western
Havana. Welcoming a visitor to her kitchen, she pointed to the slim,
white Chinese-made Haier that had taken the place of the bulky, pink
Frigidaire that had been in her family for 24 years.
She called herself Moraima Hernández, but indicated with a wink that she
was concealing her real name — the only way she felt able to speak
without fear of retaliation. Well, up to a point. She declined to say
why she felt Mr. Castro was casting a shadow over items as banal as
household appliances.
Instead, she simply opened the Haier to reveal its meager contents:
bottles of tap water, a few eggs, mustard, half an avocado and some
"textured picadillo," soy protein mixed with a bit of ground beef.
Her old refrigerator was so big, she said nostalgically, that two legs
of pork could fit inside.
Continuing her tale, she said that it took eight men to carry the
Frigidaire from her second-story apartment down to the street and that
they had to remove part of her balcony to make way. The Haier, by
contrast, was carried up with ease.
The Chinese model makes less noise than the Frigidaire. And like many
other refrigerators in Cuba, it already has an affectionate, if mocking.
nickname: "Llovizna," or "Drippy," because of the moisture that
accumulates on its shelves.
Cubans do not have to switch to Chinese refrigerators, but there are
strong incentives to comply. When the exchange program is offered to a
town or neighborhood, it is presented as the apple of Fidel's eye, and
as an opportunity to show one's patriotism while lowering one's
electricity bill.
But unlike education and health care in Cuba, refrigerators are not
free. A concern for Cubans is the cost of the new Chinese models: about
$200, a small fortune in a country where the average monthly wage is
about $15.
Ten-year payment plans have been made available.
But officials have already acknowledged problems in collecting
installments. Granma, the Communist Party's daily newspaper, reported
that provincial officials had promised "actions intended to elevate
payment discipline in the beneficiary population."
Of course, debt and interest remain elastic concepts in Cuba, which is
not a member of the International Monetary Fund or any other
multilateral lending organization. Today, its top trading partners are
Venezuela, which provides Cuba with cheap oil, and China, which buys raw
materials like nickel from Cuba while selling it items like refrigerators.
The island's economic isolation, compounded by a United States embargo
in place since the early 1960s, has made a necessity of preserving
technology from before the revolution. Inspired by the ingenuity it took
to keep American refrigerators working so long, a group of Cuban artists
last year transformed 52 of them into art. They put on a show called
"Instruction Manual" that was a big hit in Cuba and is making the rounds
in Europe this year.
In the show, the artists Alejandro and Esteban Leyva pinned medals on an
old G.E. refrigerator, painted it olive drab and named it "General
Eléctrico." Another artist, Alexis Leyva, installed oars on his
refrigerator, drawing on the politically loaded symbol of the homemade
boats Cubans use to leave the island illegally. Others were made into
cars, skyscrapers a Trojan horse and a jail cell.
Ernesto García Peña, a painter, turned his into an eroticized female
image. "In this heat," he explained, "the refrigerator is almost
worshiped for its role as an absolute necessity of modern life. We treat
it with very special affection."
Still, necessity most often trumps sentimentality in Cuba. Many
thousands of old refrigerators are simply being taken to junkyards,
where technicians recycle everything they can.
According to the government, the refrigerators weigh an average of 122
pounds, including 93 pounds of retrievable steel, 18 of plastic, 3 of
aluminum and 2 of copper.
The steel goes to plants like Antillana de Acero in Havana, where it is
transformed into construction material. The copper goes to the Empresa
Conrado Benítez to produce telephone and electric cables. The aluminum
is used to make kitchen utensils and parts for other appliances.
"Where do the old refrigerators go?" Granma asked in the headline of one
of its many articles on Cuba's energy-efficiency drive. "From them," the
newspaper said, "everything is reclaimed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/weekinreview/02romero.html?ref=world
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